Biosphere Three/Transcript

WORK IN PROGRESS; NEEDS HUMAN REVIEW

[ gunshots ]

[ glass shatters ]

harold: Shakespeare wrote

that brevity is the soul of wit.

Well, that's true,

and to prove that brevity and

soul and wit all go together,

here's a short, funny guy,

my uncle, your host,

red green!

Whoo!

Uncle red! Yeah!

It's uncle red!

It's uncle red!

It's uncle red!

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thank you, harold,

for that classy intro.

I take it

your english class

is still studying

the bard of avon.

Well,

she sold some eye makeup

and some face cream

to my mom.

The bard of avon,

harold.

Oh, I thought you said,

"barb, from avon."

I'm sorry.

Shakespeare, harold.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we're studying "hamlet"

in school.

Yeah, I get to be hamlet.

I think he's the star,

you know,

unless it's one of

those weird titles

that's, like,

way out there,

sort of like

"fried green tomatoes."

but I'm gonna jazz it up.

I'm gonna add some pizzazz

to it, you know?

Like this.

[ keyboard clacking ]

wa-a!

Well, that ought to do it,

harold.

You know, uh,

you quoting shakespeare --

I carry a little shakespearean

quote around with me, you know?

This is from

"midsummer night's dream."

"a local habitation

and a name.

Such tricks have

strong imagination."

so true, isn't that?

Yeah.

Wonder what it means.

No idea.

I'm sorry.

You go ahead, uncle red.

Oh, thank you.

I was just

gonna tell everybody

about that plan we got

to do biosphere 3.

Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

That's good.

That's like biosphere 2?

Yeah.

That's that experiment

those environmentalists did

in the american desert,

right,

where they built this sealed-up,

completely enclosed world.

It was like a giant greenhouse

or something.

Yeah, that's right.

So, we've got the --

you know, they got lots of

important scientific information

from that,

but more importantly,

they got lots of money, too.

Yeah.

So our plan is for --

so uncle red and all the guys --

you know what they're gonna do?

[ laughs ]

they're gonna, like,

completely enclose possum lodge.

Wa-a-a!

Gonna put plastic

over this whole mess --

try and tap into those

government funds, you know?

[ laughs ]

so, you're gonna be hamlet,

are you, harold?

Yeah.

Hamlet dies, doesn't he?

Yes, but not until

after he kills his uncle.

Ah.

[ spoons and guitar playing ]

♪ wherever you go,

I'm going with you ♪

♪ whatever you do,

I'll do it, too ♪

♪ whenever you move,

I'm moving with you ♪

♪ 'cause we've had

an unfortunate accident ♪

♪ involving a very powerful

industrial glue ♪

this week on "handyman corner,"

gonna show you

a bunch of things you can do

with a little twinge

of imagination

and some stepladders.

Now, if you don't have

any stepladders,

I guess you could pork a few

from a construction site.

Or you could just take,

uh, normal ladders

and duct-tape the tops together.

That'll work, too.

Okay, the first project

I want to show you

is some of these split rails.

You can get these

by just pulling them

off the back of a lumber truck

when he's idling

at a long traffic light.

You get a few of these,

and you run them

right between your ladders.

Nothing to it.

And what you got there

is a little split-rail fence

with two gates.

If you live in one of them

town-house developments,

you get everybody to chip in

a stepladder,

you can have one long,

continuous fence

with everybody having

their own gate

where their kids can run

right out onto the road.

And speaking of kids,

if you got a piece of pipe down

in the basement or whatever,

or out in the garage or --

maybe you don't smoke a pipe,

but find something,

stick that between your ladders,

hang your jumper cables

on there,

and you got yourself a dandy

backyard swing for the kiddies.

And in the wintertime now,

you could, uh, run 12 volts

through the jumpers,

and it won't kill you

or nothing,

just, uh, give you enough of

a hum to take the chill off.

Or you could even hook up

to the 120 house current

and use it

as a dandy electrical fence.

I think the kids would have

a heck of a time with this,

you know?

This brings back --

I think

I'm gonna wreck the pole.

Now, appearances

can be deceiving.

This is not just

an old, crappy stepladder,

a wad of duct tape,

and an old drill.

This happens to be

a high-precision

vertical drill press.

[ whirring ]

beautiful.

Or you could use

this section up in here

to, say, crack walnuts

or lobster claws

or even break the football

helmet off the fat kid.

Or if you got a stepladder

and say you got a son who's got

a couple of bungee cords

on his bike rack --

you hook the bungee cords up,

and you got yourself one of them

exerciser thighmasters.

But not advised for anybody

with a big nose...

Or other --

other larger options.

And here's something else

you can use.

A portable pen.

You just take the stepladder

like this

and put her up against a wall

or a fence,

and you can put your kid

in there, or a dog,

or stray cattle

or what have you.

They're not gonna go anywhere.

The other interesting use

of a stepladder

is, uh, flip her upside down.

It'll help you put the drywall

on your ceiling.

You mount the whole thing

like that,

put your drywall up on top

of the four legs like so.

Now you put the whole --

you put the whole rig

onto a hydraulic jack

or moose thompson,

whatever's handier,

and then you just chuck

the whole thing

up against the ceiling

and then go get yourself

another ladder

and carry your vertical

drill press up with you,

and you can screw the drywall

right into the ceiling.

And it's just that easy.

'course, now,

the best use of a stepladder

is a ladder

that saves you steps.

So, let's say you got to go up

somewhere real high,

and you don't have

a real big ladder.

Well, you don't need

a real big ladder.

All you need

is more stepladders.

See, you take

your two stepladders.

You put them together,

put an extra bar on the top

to get a little extra width,

take your third ladder,

put that up on top

of the other two.

[ grunting ]

and that's a lot easier

than getting a big ladder.

I think this is

what michelangelo used

when he did the sistine chapel.

Now you're up twice as high.

If you want to go up

three times as high,

uh...You'd need three ladders,

and --

I guess about 30 ladders.

Oh, six.

Okay, six ladders.

You want to go up

four times as high,

you'd need, uh...

You'd need scaffolding.

Okay.

Well, I guess that's about it

for stepladders,

so, till next time,

remember --

if the women

don't find you handsome,

they should

at least find you handy.

Time to hit

the wild blue yonder.

Ooh, boy.

A little shaky,

but all that I need.

Oh, boy, I don't know.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Uh-oh! Gravity.

And now it's that part

of the show

where we expose

the three little words

that men just find

so difficult to say --

"I don't know."

and here are my guests on

"the experts" segment today --

of course my uncle red,

and -- oh! -- Hap shaughnessy.

Here's letter number one.

"dear experts,

although I have a degree

"in both economics

and political science

"and have won

many friendly games

"of 'I'm way smarter

than you are,'

"I have never really understood

how computers work.

Can you explain?"

hap?

No, go ahead.

[ clears throat ]

well, uh, a computer's

a very simple thing.

Yeah,

there's nothing to it.

Yeah.

Mainly you have

your computer programs,

which are on the disks,

and the disks go

into the computer,

and they're spun around there

by a type of an electric drill.

And that's flying around

in there

so that your software

high-density database units

come spinning right off the disk

and ram right up against

your tv screen.

And that allows you

to print stuff off,

and you can get graphs,

which will show you exactly

how much money

you're gonna lose next year.

Well, I better clarify that

a bit, I think.

To do that, I have to go back

as far as the old morse code

that I used during wwii

when I had to let my squad know

that I'd captured this enemy

battalion single-handedly.

But I had to decline

the medal

because there wasn't enough room

left on the tunic anymore.

They were disappearing

over the shoulder.

But, uh, where morse code

was dots and dashes,

computers

are ones and zeros,

or bits and bytes,

or I's and b.M.'s.

And they got --

and they got

this little japanese robot

inside the cpu,

and he's going like that

to beat the band.

"it is winter.

"I come home late

from the office christmas party.

"she is angry at the smell

of garlic on my breath.

She knows I don't eat garlic,

but my secretary does."

when you're in a biosphere,

you get lonely,

so I thought I'd talk

to the expert on that subject.

Gord?

You asleep?

Oh! Fire! Fire!

Gord, gord, no!

Gord, gord!

Fire!

Gord, gord,

it's just us.

Oh, great.

Visitors.

This is great.

Oh, wonderful.

You know, if it weren't

for your visits,

I'd probably go

totally wacko.

Blp-blp-blp-blp!

Yeah, that's good.

I'm glad to hear that.

Yeah, thanks to you, I'm still

clinging on to my sanity.

You know...

[ grunting ]

yeah.

Uh, gord, we're doing a kind of

biosphere thing up at the lodge,

and I thought maybe

you could give us a few tips

on, uh, you know,

how to live in isolation.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, well, you know,

the thing to remember

is that mind and body

aren't separate,

so, you know, if, uh --

if you were to hit your head

really, really hard

against that tree or

a ranger station or something,

you know, they're one.

So, you know,

to keep the mind active,

you got to keep the body fit,

you know?

So, you know,

you must, you must,

you must increase

the bust.

[ air whistles ]

[ glass shatters ]

you know, you get a new mirror

put on that van,

and send me the bill.

I'll do that.

You might want to

hand deliver it, though,

'cause, you know, the mail

rarely gets through here.

I'm sorry.

No, that's all right.

I'll take my chances

on the mail delivery.

Thanks anyway, gord.

Well, this biosphere 3 thing

is coming together pretty good,

although nobody was willing

to make a commitment

until moose thompson

promised to wear pajamas.

You know,

I don't think that you guys --

well, okay,

let me rephrase that.

Do you guys really think

that you're gonna pack

everything that

you're gonna need?

[ laughs ]

'cause I don't.

Well, harold,

I don't really care --

no, no,

let me rephrase that.

Nobody in their right mind

would care what you think,

harold.

So, the guys are gathering up

all the essentials,

and they all realize they're

gonna need their own space.

Uncle red, do you really realize

what's required of all this?

You know, it's going to be

an enclosed space.

I mean, you got to be

completely self-sufficient.

Nothing goes in,

nothing come out.

Yeah, harold,

we know how the deal works.

We're gonna make all our own

food and beverages.

The only problem

we're having --

we can't figure out

how to make chip dip.

I don't know.

I hope you realize you got to

dispose of your own waste, too.

Well, thanks anyway,

but we're gonna keep trying

for the chip dip.

I don't know.

I really don't think

this is gonna work.

It's gonna work fine.

These are very simple guys.

A lot of these guys can live

for two weeks

on a couple of comic books

and a bottle opener.

Uncle red,

I know these guys.

Come on.

There's gonna be arguments.

There's gonna be

fistfights.

There's gonna be, like,

tag-team texas death matches.

Wa-a-a!

I don't think there will be

any arguing or fighting,

'cause, of course,

harold won't be there.

Oh, no, no, no, no,

I will not be there.

You're gonna forget

something.

If we forget something,

we'll just borrow it

before we go in there.

"neither a borrower

nor lender be."

shakespeare said that.

Shut up, harold.

The whole world

is saying that.

[ spoons and guitar playing ]

♪ up at the lodge ♪

♪ the men are full ♪

♪ of beer and themselves ♪

♪ and bravado and bull ♪

♪ they don't take no guff ♪

♪ they don't settle for less ♪

♪ so, thank god for women ♪

♪ or we'd be

in one hell of a mess ♪

[ laughs ]

I said "hell."

[ laughs ]

[ film projector clicking ]

red: Look out, look out,

look out, look out, look out!

[ tires screech ]

bill's here.

Now, bill said he had kind of

a surprise for every --

a surprise for me this week.

Anyway,

he wanted to make something.

And, oh, yeah.

And he'd gone down to --

they got "swiss family robinson"

playing at the possum theater

in town.

I don't go to the show.

I just cry at the movies.

And that's just

when I buy my ticket.

But, yeah, kind of

a sprinkler there,

and some hoses and some

hockey sticks, some canvas.

Got a bicycle rim.

Got an old pump off the farm

there, and --

I'll put that --

that'll be fine, I guess.

And I don't know what he had

in mind, so he's...

No, bill.

He's breaking it.

Oh, I see. Okay.

He's breaking the illegal curve,

I guess, on that one.

And then he wanted me

to hold that, and -- no!

No, no, no.

Don't like --

yeah, this is a better idea.

I'll do the -- I'd rather be

a hammer than a garfunkel.

And then he wrapped the canvas

around the, uh,

around the hockey sticks

and duct-taped them.

And one hockey stick

we had up high,

and then we put the sprinkler

on there.

I'm starting to get an idea now.

The hose is hooked up

to the pump,

so what's gonna happen

is that whatever's in the pump

is gonna go around the hose,

up the thing, and out the...

And I think what --

yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought so.

It's a shower type thing.

But I'm saying, "where's

the water gonna come from?"

you got to have water

going into the pump

before you can have water

coming out of the pump.

But here again, the old swiss

family robinson influence --

he's gonna -- no, bill.

Nobody wants -- oh, yeah.

All right. All right.

All right.

It's a rain barrel.

Yeah, that'll be fine.

That's good.

Now you need something

to make the pump go around.

The pump's got to spin, bill.

You just kind of turn that by --

no, no.

Well, he had jacked up

not only the price of this car,

but, actually,

the whole back end,

and he took the tire off,

and he put just a rim on there.

Now, what's going on there?

Oh, I see.

What he's thinking there

is he can use that as a drive --

a drive wheel.

Got an old fire hose there,

and -- yeah, okay.

This is like a power takeoff

on the old john deere.

Nothing takes off like a deere.

And so I wrapped the fire hose

around there,

and what's gonna happen,

I guess,

is that when you start her up

and put her in gear

and what have you,

the wheel's gonna spin,

which is gonna move the --

yeah, all right.

It's gonna drive the pump,

gonna pump the water

from the rain barrel

out into the hose

and out the sprinkler.

So he said to me, okay,

he's gonna get ready

to take a shower.

Let me start her up here.

And she's --

[ engine turns over ]

oh, there you go.

She's running good.

Oh, bill, you're gonna spook

the horses there.

Wow.

He wants me to put her

into gear,

and, you know, it's unfortunate

he'd forgotten

one little detail.

That baby

is a front-wheel drive.

Oh, that's unfortunate,

isn't it?

You know, anybody who puts

that much work and ingenuity

into something deserves

a shower, don't you think?

This week

on "handy teen corner,"

we're gonna build stuff

to impress the girls

in your school.

[ laughs ]

now, in my experience,

women like to make the move

on guys who have

a lot of electrical equipment.

[ laughs ]

but, you know, video and audio

equipment costs major dollars,

and if all you got is, like,

your allowance or even worse --

you know,

a paycheck from your uncle --

then, you know, the handy teen's

gonna have to be creative.

Wa-a-a!

So, firstly,

let's build a fake walkman

out of a piece of black wood

and some black string.

Wa-a-a!

No, no, it's not gonna work

or anything, but, look.

You just --

you just plug it in, right?

And then, you know,

you sing, like, a popular song

along with it,

and who's gonna be the wiser,

you know?

♪ muskrat suzie, muskrat sam ♪

"oh, look,

that guy's wearing a walkman.

Who knows it doesn't work?

I certainly don't."

[ singing indistinctly ]

it's like that.

You could do that, right?

So, to get started, what

we're gonna need, of course,

is the handy teen's secret

weapon -- wa! -- Duct tape.

Okay.

Red:

Harold? Harold?

[ doorknob rattles ]

next week, I'll show you how

to build a lock for your room.

[ laughs ]

harold!

So, we just tape it right up.

Harold!

What's going on here,

harold?

Well,

it's my part of the show,

and you said if I come up

with an original idea --

original, harold?

"handy teen corner"?

Well...

A handy teen's

secret weapon?

Remember, if the cheerleaders

don't find you handsome,

at least they should ask you

to do their homework for them.

Now, I know

a lot of you teenagers

feel you have to rebel

and be obnoxious

and embarrass your parents

at restaurants,

but that's just a normal part

of growing up,

whereas getting a tattoo

is stupid.

A tattoo is basically

a liquid sliver,

and the liquid is permanent ink.

Getting a tattoo is kind of like

sucking on a pen

with your whole body.

And it's painful.

There's only two things more

painful than getting a tattoo --

the first one being

getting two tattoos,

and the second one is getting

either of them removed.

Now, I know there may be

some appeal

in having "guns n' roses"

tattooed on your butt,

but 60 years from now,

in the middle

of your hemorrhoid operation,

you're gonna find out

why it's not a good idea

to get your surgeon laughing.

Hey, hello, red.

I figured

once the smell of this

started wafting

across the lake,

you'd show up.

Yeah?

We thought every jogger

in the world

was taking their shoes off

at exactly the same moment.

Ah, you can't fool me,

red.

I know you just love

to wrap yourself

around a bowl

of my special chowder.

Well,

maybe sometime, reg,

but unfortunately,

you've caught me on a day

when I'm not starving

to death.

What is in there, anyway?

Is that skunk?

No!

No meat, red.

I don't eat meat.

I'm a hunter,

not a barbarian.

Nope, red, what you got here

is cabbage, beet root,

brussels sprouts, broccoli,

and a big, yellow turnip.

You soak them all

in vinegar

until your eyes water so bad

you can't tie your shoes.

Then you bring the whole deal

to a boil for a day and a half,

and then pour it into

explosion-proof containers.

[ sniffs ]

mmm!

If I had eaten this healthy

back in the law firm,

I'd have been able to handle

twice the caseload.

Well, you would have gone

through a lot more suits,

that's for sure.

Now, listen, reg.

We're doing this biosphere thing

up at the lodge,

and I thought maybe you might

have some legal tips, you know,

before we all kind of

bunk in together like that.

Whoa, you have to be

very careful there, red.

You should really draw up

a contract going in

that explains how problems

will be dealt with.

My niece ran into

one of these deals,

and she came out

with a bunch of new friends

and a brand-new baby.

Golly.

How long was she in there?

Well,

the biosphere programs

are always for a minimum

of two years less a day, red.

Two years?

My wife isn't gonna let me

be away for two years.

She says

I can either be away

for the odd weekend

here and there,

or I can be away

all the time forever,

but nothing in between.

Oh, sure.

My wife went for plan b.

But I don't blame her.

You know, I think she'd like me

better now.

But she's off in europe

with that tennis instructor,

so she has no idea

what she's missing.

Well...

Soon as everybody found out

this biosphere 3 thing

was a two-year commitment,

that pretty well kiboshed

the whole deal.

I mean, we all get along

pretty well,

but two years is 730 days,

or more importantly,

730 nights.

That's 98,000 meals

and six laundry days.

Somebody would get hurt,

guaranteed.

You know, uncle red,

it's too bad we can't treat

the earth like a biosphere --

always being careful not to

take out more than we put in.

Well, we could start

by burying you.

Just saying we should respect

the biosphere that we have.

And will the government pay us

to do that, harold?

Wa!

No.

See, there's a problem

right there.

See, they got their priorities

all completely screwed up

down there, you know?

I would be happy to save the

planet for the next generation

if there was any money

in it.

[ screeching ]

oh, that --

it's meeting time.

It's meeting time.

Here we go.

Yeah, you go ahead, harold.

I'll be right down.

Oh, kay-o.

I'm sure he means well,

but who cares?

Anyway, if my wife is watching,

I'll be coming straight home

after the meeting.

I might be a bit late,

but I'll still be two years

earlier than I thought I'd be.

And to the rest of you,

on behalf of myself and harold

and the whole gang

up here at possum lodge,

thanks for watching,

and keep your stick on the ice.

[ screeching ]

all rise.

All:

Quando omni flunkus, moritati.

Red:

All right, have a seat.

All right,

I know a lot of you

had your heart set

on the biosphere thing,

and I just, uh --

I'm sorry it didn't work out.

Aw. Aw.

Aw. Aw.